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Russian strikes kill three in Odesa, hit Poltava air base – Ukraine

Kyiv/Odesa, Ukraine
Reuters

Russia fired missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday, killing three civilians in the Black Sea city of Odesa and striking a military air field in the central Poltava region, Kyiv authorities said.

The attacks, in which a 29-year-old was also killed in the northeast Kharkiv region according to officials, were the latest in a spate of overnight strikes that Russia has intensified as Kyiv sets its sights on a major counter-offensive.

A view shows an apartment building damaged during a massive Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, on 10th June , 2023.

A view shows an apartment building damaged during a massive Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, on 10th June, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Serhii Smolientsev

The Air Force said the attacks involved eight ground-launched missiles and 35 strike drones. Air defence units managed to down 20 drones and two cruise missiles, it said.

“As a result of the air fight, debris from one of the drones fell onto a high-rise apartment, causing a fire,” the southern military command’s spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk said of the attack on Odesa.

Firefighters battled overnight to put out the fire in the 10-storey block in a residential area of the city, footage released by the military showed.

The morning light revealed a gaping crater in the ground several metres wide next to the damaged building and a children’s playground, a Reuters photographer said.



Three people were killed including a couple who lived on the eighth floor of the building and a man who had been outside at the time of the attack, authorities said.

At least 27 other people, including three children, were hurt, the emergency services said.

The first drone strike came around midnight and was followed by three more. Air raid sirens blared repeatedly through the night.

Russia also fired drones and ballistic and cruise missiles at the Poltava region, inflicting “some damage of infrastructure and equipment” at the Myrhorod military airfield, the regional Governor said.

Ten drones attacked two areas of the Kharkiv region, which borders Russia and also backs onto the front line, wounding a 39-year-old man and killing one other person, Governor Oleh Synehubov.

Ukraine also shot down two drones over the Dnipropetrovsk region where no damage was reported, its Governor Serhiy Lysak said.

Ukrainian service members ride a M113 armoured personnel carrier, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the front line city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on 9th June, 2023.

Ukrainian service members ride a M113 armoured personnel carrier, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the front line city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine on 9th June, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Viacheslav Ratynskyi

Earlier on Saturday, a Ukrainian military spokesman reported that counter-attacking Ukrainian forces have advanced up to 1,400 metres at a number of sections of the front line near the eastern city of Bakhmut in the past day, a military spokesman said on Saturday.

The advance is the latest in a series of similar gains reported this week by Kyiv near Bakhmut, which Russia said it had fully captured last month after the bloodiest and longest battle since it began its full-scale invasion in February, 2022.

“We’re trying…to conduct strikes on the enemy, we’re counter-attacking. We’ve managed to advance up to 1,400 metres on various sections of the front,” the spokesperson for the eastern military command said, when asked about fighting near Bakhmut.


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Serhiy Cherevaty, the official, said in televised comments that Russian forces were themselves trying to counterattack but that they had not been successful.

Ukrainian forces, he said, had inflicted heavy Russian troop casualties and destroyed military hardware in the area.

Reuters was not able to independently verify that assertion or the situation on the battlefield.

Moscow and Kyiv both reported heavy fighting in Ukraine on Friday, with bloggers describing the first sightings of German and US armour, signalling that Ukraine’s long-anticipated counter-attack was under way.

Russia, which has built extensive fortifications in Ukraine’s occupied east and south, said this week that a big push by Kyiv had failed to break through Russian lines.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said that Ukrainian forces have penetrated the first line of Russian defences in some areas but that Kyiv’s progress had been slower in others.

Officials in Ukraine, which has been poised to launch a broad counteroffensive for weeks, denies its much-anticipated push has begun and says that when it does it will be obvious.

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